Futurists from the Past

500 Words on Thursday | Written by Lee Schneider

Something weird is happening. I’m noticing that futurists are arriving from the past. Maybe I need to explain that.

There’s a young couple who have started a business empire selling heirloom seeds. The wife looks like she’d be a natural in a bonnet and the guy has Thomas Jefferson’s fashion sense. They don’t look like leading-edge people but they are responding to a leading-edge need: people want real food, and they want to grow it themselves.

Their company, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, sells 1,400 varieties of heirloom seeds and they run monthly “pioneer town” festivals with crafts, folk music and lots of bonnets – just the kind of event that has always made me want to run away. Maybe it’s the bonnets, or folk music not being sung by Bob Dylan, but old-timey stuff generally brings on in me a kind of nausea that only listening to Radiohead can cure.

But this time, it’s different. I’m willing to welcome spelling conventions like Olde Tyme into this article because of what Monsanto has done.

You know about Monsanto, the company with a long history of fouling natural resources? It got my attention in the movie Food, Inc. with its aggressive attitude about the genetically-modified seeds it produces. Monsanto has created seeds that resist its herbicide called Roundup so that farmers can spray their fields with poison that kills everything but the Monsanto seeds they’ve planted. Cool! Well, kind of cool in an evil way, because it gets convoluted. Monsanto has patented its seeds – turning a life form into a corporate asset. The patent has held up to legal challenges, allowing Monsanto to threaten farmers who try to replant its seeds from season to season. (“Drop that seed spreader and back away from the dirt, mister.”)

Ever since dirt was invented farmers have saved seeds to replant. Monsanto says you can’t do that and reaps great profits from what farmers sow. Oh, and according to the International Journal of Biological Sciences, Monsanto’s genetically-modified corn might be linked with organ failure. So the Monsanto corn on the cob I serve might cause your liver to blow up. Sorry, would you like another Chardonnay instead? You can stay away from what Monsanto is doing by buying organic. Or you can buy your own seeds and plant them.

That’s where the heirloom seed people come in. They’ll sell you purple tomatoes and white pumpkins that look a little like organs themselves but are good for you. Despite last week’s blog, I am not advocating a worldwide return to whittling and wearing gingham, but I will be seeing how many acres of tomatoes I can fit on our porch in Santa Monica.

Photo credit: Bill Ward via Creative Commons License.